Welcome to my rant. Last night my crew and I went salvaging in a Reclaimer around Yela. After completing a contract, we jumped to OM-3. Another player in a Cutlass Blue was waiting for us. The Cutty put up their QED, preventing us from warping out. He opened up with a salvo of missiles and starting firing. Damn pirates! Battle stations everyone! We scrambled to cover ourselves, and thankfully our crew is pretty good. In short order we had the turrets manned and were able to make a good show of it, proving to be too much of a challenge for the Cutty who gave up the chase and QT'd away. Whew! We had sustained some damage, and had some cargo to sell, so decided to head to Seraphim to offload some of our crew and see if we could cash out. After arriving, our crew disembarked, we tried selling (unsuccessfully) so decided to relocate to Orison. A couple of us climbed aboard for the short hop. Turns out our Cutty friend got to the station ahead of us, and decided to swap out his Cutlass for an Eclipse. While we were climbing on board getting ready to fly to Orison, he was sitting outside armistice writing our names on a torp. No sooner had we powered up than we got a missile alert. INCOMING! We tried to take evasive manoeuvres, but between all the abandoned ships floating around, close proximity to the station, and suddenness of the attack, we really couldn't do much. We couldn't even defend ourselves as we were inside armistice so our weapons wouldn't work. What came next was, to quote Thanos, "inevitable". Reclaimer destroyed. Two player deaths. 3.5M in cargo lost. Six players who invested their evening working as a team, and having successfully defended themselves against hostile forces out in the black, get nothing for their efforts. Because some troll decided it would be funny to blow us up for shits and giggles. There are many reasons why combat does (and should) exist in this game. Piracy for one. Perhaps a war declaration between orgs, who have agreed to engage in hostilities between them. Competition for scarce resources. PvP between players. Contracts like Wake of Disaster, where it is expected that you'll have to fight to defend your share of the bounty. But an Eclipse attacking an industrial ship inside armistice, a dedicated "no combat" zone, is in my view, beyond the pale. There was no blood feud or war declaration. There was no financial incentive, no stealing our loot. Just wanton destruction of a comparatively helpless target. In the real world, we have a name for people who engage in this sort of behaviour. People who deliberately target innocent civilians and seek to cause loss of life and destruction of property. It is certainly NOT griefers, or trolls. If you're not sure, just ask any New Yorker, or Londoner. Some people will argue "it's just a game", and sure, it is. We ALL play it for enjoyment and relaxation. But when people "murder for LOLs" I can assure you the enjoyment is only one way. I love Star Citizen as a game. I've put money into that passion to help fund the development of the game I have high hopes for. But events like last night have made me realise I am becoming increasingly cynical about my play experience. While Chris Roberts is selling the fantasy of the "gentleman pirate" who asks nicely (albeit at gunpoint - but still uses their manners) the reality is the game disenfranchises players who enjoy industrial gameplay and legal gameloops and fails to adequately protect those players from others whose sole enjoyment comes from watching the world burn. Pad-rammers. Gankers. Murder-hobos. For every player out there who wants to be a medic, doing rescue missions, there's another who enjoys luring in medics with fake contracts just so they can shoot them and loot their corpses. There's a few options for me now as a player, and I have no doubt there'll be some replies below telling me exactly which one of these I should do. Some will say "It's PvP man... if you don't like it, don't play it". Others might suggest taking a break, come back when the game is fixed. Do I change professions, go do something other than the gameloops I enjoy? Maybe I relocate operations to a quieter corner of the system where I'm less likely to be attacked. By definition, terrorism is the unlawful use of violence to threaten, intimidate, or coerce a civilian population. Thankfully, we're talking virtual lives and in-game currency, not real lives and genuine economic impact. But what's so insidious is the psychological aspect - their illegal and immoral actions in an area that should be considered sacrosanct now influence my choices as a player and how I play the game. If I quit, or take a break, or go play somewhere else, then they've won. And that is NOT ok. To be clear, I'm not advocating things like "single player mode", private or PVE servers. I don't want to abolish piracy. While my own moral values mean I wouldn't engage in it myself, I understand the desire to have what I would call "legitimate" piracy in the game - extortion and/or theft of my property/cargo. It's my choice to surrender, or fight to defend. I'm all in favour of wars between orgs, or declarations of feuds between players. These are all legitimate risks I am comfortable taking as a player of this game. What I object to are players engaging in murder, destruction of property, harassment, abusive language, or other behaviours, to the detriment of others, and with negligible deterrence or meaningful consequences for their actions. I'm sorry CIG, but the systems and game mechanics you have in place to discourage anti-social and disruptive gameplay are not up to the task. As Sam Wilson (Falcon and the Winter Soldier) says, "You've got to do better". Why? If nothing else because it makes good business sense. I've tried recruiting friends and even my kids (they're young adults) to the game and all they see is a toxic environment and want nothing to do with it. It's not the bugs. Not the crashes. Not the glitches, nor the limited gameloops, non-functional economy, or broken game mechanics. All of things you can write off to "it's an alpha". The problem is the environment created by a subset of players and the lack of adverse consequence for their behaviour. John Stuart Mill, in his inaugural address at the University of St Andrews in 1867, famously stated "Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing". Well I will not sit idly by and do nothing. I will not give in to the griefers and the trolls. I am using my voice to say that it is time for a change. What about you, CIG? What are you doing? I will leave you with another of Mill's quotes, as I think they fairly encapsulate what I think should be the fundamental principles of the game's design: "Liberty consists in doing what one desires... The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make himself a nuisance to other people."